Besides international law, international organizations, or NGOs, function internationally beyond the reach of the nation-state. From the standpoint of national sovereignty, the sheer existence of the NGO as an institutional arrangement can be viewed as a potential threat and thus smartly to be expunged. One strategy that a country’s government bent on protecting national sovereignty could use to discredit NGOs is to label them using the turbo-charged “T” word, even in the case of an NGO that is oriented exclusively to providing humanitarian aid. By 2026, Israel had decimated the infrastructure and buildings in its occupied Gaza strip, and Russia had been bombing residential buildings in Kiev and other large cities in Ukraine for four years, so it could not be said that humanitarian aid was not needed in the world. Parts of Africa ravaged by draught and war, such as in Somalia, were also in vital need of humanitarian aid. To discredit NGOs providing such assistance, whether in terms of shelter, food, or medicine, meant being open to the charge of callous disregard for the suffering of very large numbers of people. The case of Gaza—in particular, the position of the Trump administration on NGO’s being involved in the reconstruction of the strip—demonstrates the harm that is involved in turning the NGO institution-type into a controversial and even suspicious thing in order to do the bidding of a belligerent ally while removing a potential external threat to national sovereignty.
In a closed-door meeting in
July, 2026 with European and Arab government officials in Brussels oriented to how
nearly €900 million would be distributed to reconstruct the Gaza strip, “US
President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, called for a radical
overhaul of financial support for Gaza.”[1]
Although he was not an official of the U.S. Government, he doubtless had the
U.S. President’s backing in calling for a fundamental shift from the UN’s
standard approach in order to “turn the tide” against the UN agency for
Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) and other NGOs that the U.S. and Israel believed
were aiding Hamas.[2] In
fact, Kushner dismissed outright the Gaza aid initiatives carried out so far as
being “designed step by step by NGOs and terrorists.”[3]
It would certainly be news to the UN that UNRWA was actually so tainted. Of
course, Kushner and his two task masters meant to discredit the very existence
of the United Nation. The day before, U.S. Secretary of State Rubio had announced
that the U.S. would attempt to dismantle the International Criminal Court in what
could be interpreted as a wider mission to discredit international law itself
and thus give carte blanche to any country’s unimpeded sovereignty.
Even though Kushner sought to
discredit the UNRWA and NGO’s in general, he can be viewed as ethically compromised
in that he was, whether in effect or intent, representing Israel, or at least
the position of its prime minister, Ben Netanyahu, that the UN was to be a
target. Domestically in the U.S., Kushner was widely viewed as partisan, for he
was married to President Trump’s daughter and, more directly, was on Trump’s Board
of Peace, “the controversial body . . . expected to oversee the Strip’s reconstruction.”[4]
That mega-project likely included lucrative financial investments by the Trump
Organization and Kushner’s own investment firm related to prospective luxury
resorts on the Gaza-coast. Furthermore, Kushner was a close friend of Netanyahu
and thus would likely have been doing his partisan bidding as well, especially
in casting suspicion on a UN agency as aiding groups that Israel considered to
be “terrorist.” In his speech, “Kushner made a clear link between the current
humanitarian aid system and the indirect financing of Hamas, claiming that a
consistent flow of money has fallen into the hands of Hamas, which used it to
buy weapons, build tunnels, and develop rockets.”[5]
It is no accident that Israel was accusing “UNRWA of connections with terrorist
groups” even though the UN agency had denied “diverting any aid.”[6]
Of course, decimating an entire strip the size of Gaza, which included entire
cities, could be considered terrorism because civilians tacitly deemed by apartheid
Israel to be “subhuman” had been targeted by Israel’s military, and thus
government. Therefore, Kushner’s application of the “T” word is itself
indicative of his one-sided stance, and therefore of his questionable credibility
even besides the financial interest of his firm, in directing, in effect, the international
reconstruction effort that was formally launched at that very meeting.
The significance of Kushner’s
(and thus America’s and Israel’s governments’) complaint goes beyond the
reconstruction of Gaza under American and Israeli supervision, for in
castigating a UN agency and other international NGO’s, Kushner can be interpreted
as attempting to sideline international organization itself. The unspoken
assumption may be that anything beyond national sovereignty is inherently suspicious,
or at least a threat to such sovereignty. Moreover, any potential
external obstacle is best taken out, or sidelined, in the interests of national
sovereignty. Such a strategy protects national actors who are or may be
aggressive internationally, as evinced in 2026 by the U.S. in Iran, Israel in
Gaza, the West Bank, and even Lebanon, and Russia in Ukraine. It was no
accident, in other words, that international organization itself would be
sidelined by the Trump and Netanyahu administrations. At the time, the ICC had
a warrant out for Netanyahu’s arrest. Whereas the U.S. had been instrumental in
the founding of the UN and thus could be regarded as betraying the international body, the U.S. had not ratified the Rome Statute and thus
could attack the ICC from the outside, and U.S. Secretary of State Rubio had recent done just that. Again, Netanyahu's fingerprints could be seen upon careful enough inspection.
Therefore, the problem with Kushner’s speech is not merely that he was acting as Israel's surrogate in attacking the UN; even more important is the fact that he included even the UN itself in his attack on NGOs, and was thus urging the collapse of the post-World-War-II global order that had stood for international law rather than unimpeded absolutist national sovereignty. It is indeed telling that “(d)isarming Hamas was a central theme of Kushner’s speech”[7], as this emphasis was undoubtedly as per the wishes of his Israeli friend, Ben Netanyahu, who had been behind the decimation of Gaza and the homelessness of over a million residents. It should not be forgotten that the purpose of the meeting was to begin the task of turning €900 million into real construction “on the ground,” especially as the Gazans had already been relegated to tents and would soon be forcibly sent to heavily-guarded concentration-camp-like compounds in Gaza built by Israel and reminiscent of other camps on another continent at another time.
Perhaps the operative question is when humanity would be spared such inhumanity even in cycles, and look forward to international and thus unbiased humanitarian aid and reconstruction. Discrediting international organizations, and especially the UN, was not the way to build confidence globally that any such turn-around would be coming anytime soon. Given Israel’s sordid role in Gaza and the enabling by the Trump administration, those two countries arguably should not have had such a large role in a €900 billion project in Gaza. Afterall, Israel’s occupation itself of Gaza was in violation of the UN, to which Israel was, at least on a de facto basis, still a member.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
